Oct 2nd - Entrance Slip

 This excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass reminds me of the importance of names. I remember this teaching the first time I read this book - it is powerful to reflect on how this teaching has permeated my life since then. As more and more unique people come into my life, I find myself needing to make a deliberate effort to remember names. While volunteering in high school classrooms, I realized that my mentor teacher spends the first 2 weeks actively memorizing everyone’s name. There is an enormous advantage to those who remember names – particularly when you meet someone for the first time, remembering a name indicates that you are listening. You are able to speak with them more intimately… In my experience, if you forget someone’s name, it becomes nearly impossible to build a meaningful connection. I’ve been taught that when someone shares their name, it is a sacred act that should not be taken lightly.

I recently saw Robin Kimmerer speak, during which time she told us that in the language of her ancestors, Potawatomi, the names of plants were names that the plants had given themselves. With this in mind, it is easy to understand the effort she has made to learn and preserve this language.

When one understands that all plants, creatures, and aspects of the natural world are alive and our kin, it is absurd and cruel to name them as we please. This is a deeply western practice – an ideology that views the natural world as something to be used and exploited. Slave masters name their slaves.

In exactly the same way a student tells you their name, everything in the natural world can also speak their name. We should be again learning how to listen to the natural world, to hear the names the plants have for themselves. 

One final (slightly unrelated) thought... in the context of math (and western sciences generally), it seem ridiculous that we name important theorems after the individuals that discovered them. Specifically in math, I would prefer that the names of theorems be self-descriptive. For example, 'Pythagoras Theorem' should be 'Right-Angle Theorem'. Or the 'Triangle-Square Theorem'.  The Boltzmann Constant might be named the 'Gas Energy Capacity (GEC) constant'... I'm not the best with names, but having the names of people permeate our science serves little purpose other than to make our subject less accessible for someone learning. Naming our theorems in self-descriptive ways is to help bring the magic of western science to the world. 

Food for thought: I feel as though there is an argument here to suggest that math is invented, not discovered.